Photoresist canister liner

ABSTRACT

The disclosure discloses a photoresist canister liner comprises a liner body for containing photoresist comprising an upper portion and a tapered lower portion; an opening portion disposed at a top of the upper portion and comprising a photoresist outlet; and a diptube communicating with the photoresist outlet and inserted in the liner body and extending to a bottom of the lower portion. The lower portion of the liner body of the photoresist canister liner in the disclosure has diminishing section area, the photoresist can flow to the bottom of the liner body along the tapered lower portion and is collected in the bottom of the liner body, which prevents photoresist being wasted.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims benefits of Chinese Patent Application No. 201310467135.4, filed on Oct. 9, 2013 in the State Intellectual Property Office of China, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to a photoresist canister liner for containing photoresist.

RELATED ART

Photo-etching processing needs plenty of photoresist. The photoresist is stored in a photoresist canister 10′ shown in FIG. 1A for a panel manufacturer who needs to perform photo-etching. In detail, during manufacturing and packing photoresist, the panel manufacturer first transfers a photoresist canister liner in the photoresist canister 10′ and then injects the photoresist to the photoresist canister liner and seals the photoresist canister with a closure C′. After the panel manufacturer purchases the photoresist from the photoresist manufacturer, the photoresist together with the photoresist canister 10′ is put to a photo-etching machine and the photoresist canister 10′ is connected in the production line via an opening port 11′ of the photoresist canister 10. In one photo-etching machine, there are usually two canisters of photoresist for alternative use.

The inner structure of the photoresist canister is shown in FIG. 1B, and the structure of the photoresist canister liner is shown in FIG. 1C. As shown in FIG. 1B and FIG. 1C, the photoresist canister liner 1′ is usually made of flexible material such as plastic. The shape of the conventional photoresist canister liner 1′ filled up with the photoresist is similar to a column. An upper portion of the photoresist canister liner 1′ has an opening portion 2′ which is sealedly connected to a diptube 3′. The diptube 3′ is inserted into the bottom of the photoresist canister liner 1′ from the opening portion 2′.

During supplying the photoresist, dry air is filled into the photoresist canister 10′ between the inner wall of an photoresist outlet portion 12′ of the photoresist canister 10′ and the outside of the diptube 3′ so as to allow the air to be filled between the photoresist canister 10′ and the photoresist canister liner 1′. Then, the photoresist is squeezed out from the opening portion 2′ at the top of the photoresist canister liner 1′ via the diptube 3′ by force of the clean dry air to join the production line .

However, when the photoresist is nearly used up, the photoresist canister liner 1′ is squeezed to a shriveled cuboid shape from the original filled-up column shape. Residual photoresist is left around the bottom of the photoresist canister liner 1′, which causes photoresist waste. Furthermore, during the squeezing process, the column-shaped photoresist canister liner 1′ may have wrinkle, which may hide residual photoresist. This is also a big waste after years of accumulation.

Besides, the photoresist is divided into ordinary photoresist and organic photoresist. The ordinary photoresist is relatively cheap, and the shelf life is long after it is opened. The organic photoresist is much more expensive, and the shelf life is very short after it is opened. For the organic photoresist, the capacity of the conventional photoresist canister liner 1′ is over large, the organic photoresist cannot be used up in its shelf life, which is also a waste of the organic photoresist.

The above information disclosed in this related art section is only for enhancement of understanding of the related art of the disclosure and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

SUMMARY

Additional aspects and advantages will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the disclosure.

The present disclosure provides a photoresist canister liner which can prevent photoresist being wasted.

According to one aspect of the disclosure, a photoresist canister liner comprises a liner body having an upper portion and a tapered lower portion, the liner body being configured to contain photoresist; an opening portion having a photoresist outlet, the opening portion being configured to dispose at a top of the upper portion; and a diptube communicating with the photoresist outlet and inserted in the liner body and extending to a bottom of the lower portion.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the liner body has a cone shape comprising a top surface , the opening portion is located at the top surface.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the lower portion of the liner body has a cone shape, and the bottom of the lower portion forms a sharp corner.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the lower portion of the liner body is a frustum of cone.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the bottom of the lower portion of the liner body forms a round corner.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the upper portion of the liner body has a column shape.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the upper portion of the liner body has a cuboid shape.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the photoresist canister liner is capable of being disposed inside a photoresist canister with a top opening of a photo-etching machine, the opening portion of the photoresist canister liner is fixedly connected to the top of the photoresist canister, air entering the photoresist canister from the top opening is capable of squeezing the photoresist canister liner from outside of the photoresist canister liner and squeezing the photoresist out from the top opening.

According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the liner body is made of plastic.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A is a schematic diagram showing the photoresist canister.

FIG. 1B is a partial cross-sectional diagram showing the photoresist canister and the conventional photoresist canister liner.

FIG. 1C is a schematic diagram showing the conventional photoresist canister liner.

FIG. 2 is a photoresist canister liner in an embodiment of the disclosure.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing the photoresist canister liner in the embodiment in FIG. 2 is put into the photoresist canister.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing the photoresist canister liner in another embodiment of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing a photoresist canister liner in an embodiment of the disclosure. FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing the photoresist canister liner in the embodiment of FIG. 2 is put into a photoresist canister. As shown in FIG. 2, in the embodiment, the photoresist canister liner includes a liner body 1, an opening portion 2 and a diptube 3. The liner body 1 is usually made of flexible material such as plastic, and includes an upper portion 11 and a lower portion 12. The opening portion 2 is located at the upper portion 11 of the liner body 1. For example, it is located at the top of the upper portion 11. The opening portion 2 includes a photoresist outlet 21 for outflow the photoresist in the liner body 1. The diptube 3 communicates with the photoresist outlet 21, and is inserted into the bottom of the liner body 1 from the opening portion 2.

As shown in FIG. 3, the photoresist canister 10 has a top opening 20. After the photoresist liner is put into the photoresist canister 10, the opening portion 2 of the photoresist canister liner is fixedly connected to the top of the photoresist canister 10, and the photoresist can be squeezed out from the top opening 20 of the photoresist canister 10. Besides, through the top opening 20 of the photoresist canister 10, clean dry air may be filled into the photoresist canister 10 via an outside gas pipe. The clean dry air flows from the top opening 20 into the photoresist canister 10 rather than the photoresist canister liner, therefore it can squeeze the liner body 1 from the outside of the liner body 1, and squeeze the photoresist out from the opening portion 2 of the photoresist canister liner.

According to the embodiment, the liner body 1 of the photoresist canister liner has a cone shape comprising a top surface 13. The liner body 1 may have the same height with the photoresist canister 10 or slightly shorter than the photoresist canister 10. The opening portion 2 is located at the top surface 13 of the liner body 1, and the diptube 3 is inserted in the liner body 1 from the opening portion 2 and extends to the taper bottom of the liner body 1.

During photo-etching process, clean dry air is filled into the photoresist canister 10 from the top opening 20 of the photoresist canister 10, the air pressure in the photoresist canister 10 is used to squeeze the liner body 1 from the outside of the liner body 1, to force the photoresist flow out of the liner body 1 from the opening portion 2 at the top of the liner body 1 via the diptube 3.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram showing the photoresist canister liner in another embodiment of the disclosure. As shown in FIG. 4, in another embodiment, the upper portion 11 of the liner body 1 may have any different shapes such as a column shape, a cucoid shape and so on. The lower portion 12 of the liner body 1 is tapered, and the bottom of the lower portion 12 may form a sharp corner. Or, the lower portion 12 of the liner body 1 is a frustum of cone, namely a cone without a bottom. Or, the bottom of the liner body 1 may be a round corner. The diptube 3 is inserted in the liner body 1 and extends to the bottom of the lower portion 12 of the liner body 1. In the embodiment, the lower portion 12 of the liner body 1 has a cone shape, the diptube 3 is inserted in the bottom of the cone, and the photoresist is squeezed out from the liner body 1 by the clean dry air.

Since the lower portion 12 of the liner body 1 is tapered, namely the side wall of the lower portion 12 is tilted for certain angle, the photoresist may flow to the bottom of the liner body 1 along the tapered lower portion 12 and concentrate to the bottom of the liner body 1 when the photoresist is nearly used up, which prevents the waste of the photoresist. Besides, the wrinkle of the liner body generated during squeezing the liner body is reduced, and the waste of residual photoresist left in the wrinkle is also decreased.

The photoresist in the disclosure may flow to the bottom of the photoresist canister liner smoothly, and it is easy to make full use of the photoresist, reduce the waste of the photoresist and manufacturing cost. Besides, the utilization of the photoresist is improved since the improved photoresist canister liner has less capacity compared with the conventional cuboid liner, and the problem that the photoresist is not used up during its shelf life is also solved.

It should be noted that the above embodiments is only illustrated for describing the technical solution of the disclosure and not restrictive, and although the disclosure is described in detail by referring to the aforesaid embodiments, the skilled in the art should understand that the aforesaid embodiments can be modified and portions of the technical features therein may be equally changed, which does not depart from the spirit and scope of the technical solution of the embodiments of the disclosure. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A photoresist canister liner comprising: a liner body having an upper portion and a tapered lower portion, the liner body being configured to contain photoresist; an opening portion having a photoresist outlet, the opening portion being configured to dispose at a top of the upper portion; a diptube communicating with the photoresist outlet and inserted in the liner body, and extending to a bottom of the lower portion.
 2. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the liner body has a cone shape comprising a top surface , the opening portion is located at the top surface.
 3. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the lower portion of the liner body has a cone shape, and the bottom of the lower portion forms a sharp corner.
 4. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the lower portion of the liner body is a frustum of cone.
 5. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the bottom of the lower portion of the liner body forms a round corner.
 6. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 3, wherein the upper portion of the liner body has a column shape.
 7. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 3, wherein the upper portion of the liner body has a cuboid shape.
 8. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the photoresist canister liner is capable of being disposed inside a photoresist canister with a top opening of a photo-etching machine, the opening portion of the photoresist canister liner is fixedly connected to the top of the photoresist canister, air entering the photoresist canister from the top opening is capable of squeezing the photoresist canister liner from outside of the photoresist canister liner and squeezing the photoresist out from the top opening.
 9. The photoresist canister liner according to claim 1, wherein the liner body is made of plastic. 